Kamil Amin, a spokesman from Iraq’s Human Rights Ministry, says
hundreds of women from the Yazidi religious minority have been
taken captive. He said that the women are under 35 years old and
are being held at a school in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city,
which is now under IS control.

The ministry learned of the situation from the victims' families,
AP reports.

It comes after the US carried out limited airstrikes against
Islamic State (IS) artillery, which had been targeting the
Kurdish capital Erbil. An end date for the strikes has not yet
been established, the White House said in statement on Friday.

Some 50,000 residents of the Yazidi community have been forced to
flee their homes in northern Iraq, and their capital Sinjar is
now under the control Islamic State Sunni jihadists.

Up to 40,000 are stuck up Mt. Sinjar, where they are surrounded
by IS fighters who have threatened them with death. Many women
and children, as well as the sick and elderly, have already died
on the mountain from hunger and dehydration, although the US
dropped some food supplies earlier on Friday.

The president of the autonomous Kurdistan region, Fuad Hussein,
confirmed on Friday that IS militants now have control of the
Mosul dam, the biggest in Iraq, which may give them the ability
to cut off vital water and electricity supplies.